A Major Ansel Adams Exhibition Arrives in San Francisco

Ansel Adams’s crisp black-and-white photographs of Yosemite National Park are iconic, inescapable even.

The moon glowing over the sheer face of Half Dome. The gushing cascade of Nevada Fall. The glassy waters of the Merced River reflecting evergreen trees and granite peaks. These images feel inseparable from the history of California and of conservation and national parks in the United States.

But Adams, a native San Franciscan who lived most of his life in the city, photographed far more than the Golden State’s wilderness during his decades-long career as a photographer and environmentalist. He captured the tangled freeways of Los Angeles, Japanese Americans imprisoned at Manzanar during World War II, and the profusion of pump jacks and derricks in Long Beach after oil was discovered there in the early 20th century.

These surprising and stunning images are on display in San Francisco at the de Young’s new exhibition “Ansel Adams in Our Time,” which opens on Saturday and runs through July 23. More than 100 images from Adams, a self-described “California photographer,” are juxtaposed alongside photographs of the American West taken by Adams’s predecessors as well as by contemporary artists.

The exhibition, perhaps as expected, begins with Adams’s photographs of Yosemite National Park, where, as a 14-year-old boy on a family vacation, he first picked up a camera, a gift from his father. But the show traces his connection to the natural world even earlier.

Adams was born in San Francisco in 1902 and grew up in what’s now the city’s northern Sea Cliff neighborhood, where his family home was perched above windswept dunes overlooking the Presidio, Marin Headlands and the Golden Gate (before the bridge was built). He felt an almost spiritual connection to these familiar landscapes and to similarly sweeping expanses he would later photograph in Death Valley, Yellowstone, Kings Canyon and more, said Karen Haas, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which organized the show with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Standing in front of a mural-size Adams print of the craggy Sierra Nevada illuminated by a sunrise in the Owens Valley, Haas told me: “This was his religion.”

But Adams’s California catalog extended beyond the countryside. He photographed decaying buildings in the state’s abandoned mining towns, the planting of tract housing in the hills of San Bruno, and a dilapidated cemetery in Mono Lake.

As a young man in San Francisco, Adams experimented with grittier images. He turned his camera toward political posters pasted on city walls; crumbling classical sculptures in Sutro Heights; and tombstones in the Laurel Hill Cemetery, now demolished, in the Inner Richmond. (In the exhibition, the photographs of old San Francisco are annotated with cross streets so you can envision exactly where in the city Adams stood to take them.)

“It was in San Francisco that Adams became a modernist photographer,” Sarah Mackay, a curator with the Fine Arts Museums, said, calling the show’s arrival in the city a “warm welcome home.” Adams’s very first museum exhibition was in 1932 at the de Young.

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What we’re eating

Chocolate-caramel matzo toffee.

Where we’re traveling

Today’s tip comes from Duncan Barr, who recommends a trip to Siskiyou County: “A county as large as Rhode Island, it’s packed with outdoor activities, great skiing, bike and hiking trails, fishing and gorgeous country.”

Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We’ll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.

Tell us

After a rainy winter, spring has arrived in California. Tell us your favorite part of the season, whether it’s in the form of road trips, festivals, sunny afternoons or wildflower sightings.

Email us at CAToday@nytimes.com, and please include your name and the city where you live.

And before you go, some good news

Parrots could soon become the official animal of San Francisco.

The San Francisco Chronicle hosted an online competition asking people to vote for an animal ambassador, and on Monday, wild parrots narrowly beat out sea lions for the win. Just a day later, a San Francisco County supervisor introduced legislation that would officially make wild parrots the animal of San Francisco.

Parrots arrived in San Francisco in the late 1980s — most likely escaping from a pet store — and two different species have since mated to create a hybrid parrot that’s unique to the city, Peter Hartlaub, a culture critic for The Chronicle, writes.

Hartlaub, who co-hosted the online contest, explained why the eccentric birds deserve such an honor:

“The wild parrots are associated with North Beach and the waterfront, but they’re San Francisco’s real life Pokemon, liable to show up anywhere, whether you’re chilling in a backyard in Cole Valley, climbing Bayview Hill overlooking Candlestick Point or having a picnic in the Presidio.

They’re loud, colorful newcomers that help shape the city in their bold image — just like so many of our greatest residents. Robin Williams was a wild parrot. Harvey Milk was a wild parrot. Rita Moreno, Jerry Rice and Hunter Pence? All wild parrots.”

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow. — Soumya

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword.

Briana Scalia and Isabella Grullón Paz contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at CAtoday@nytimes.com.

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